NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey gave mission managers a real treat this Halloween with its first look at the red planet. It's a thermal infrared image of the martian southern hemisphere that captures the south polar carbon dioxide ice cap at a temperature of about minus 120 C (minus 184 F). Read More

The United States returned to Mars last night as NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey fired its main engine at 7:26 p.m. Pacific time on Oct. 23rd (0226 UT on Oct. 24th) and was captured into orbit around the red planet. Read More

After 200 days of travel and more than 460 million kilometers (about 285 million miles) logged on its odometer, NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft will fire its main engine for the first and only time Oct. 23 and put itself into orbit around the red planet. Read More

At 8:30 a.m. Pacific time today, NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft passed the halfway point on its journey to Mars. It has been 100 days since Odyssey's launch and 100 days remain until it arrives at the red planet. Read More

NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft is in excellent health as engineers continue to check out and evaluate the performance of its systems and science instruments during its early cruise phase. Read More

This morning, flight controllers for NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory successfully tested the ability of the high-gain communications antenna to send and receive commands. Read More

Future human explorers of Mars can leave their umbrellas back on Earth, but perhaps they shouldn't forget their Geiger counters! A NASA experiment en route to the Red Planet aims to find out. Read More

NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft turned its multipurpose camera homeward last week and took its first picture -- a shot of a faint crescent Earth -- as the spacecraft heads off toward its destination, the planet Mars. Read More

This morning flight controllers turned the Mars Odyssey spacecraft and pointed the thermal emission imaging system at Earth and the Moon to calibrate the instrument. All calibration objectives were met. Read More

Due to a favorable launch trajectory on Saturday, flight controllers for Mars Odyssey have decided that they can postpone the first maneuver to fine-tune the spacecraft's flight path. All systems on the spacecraft are in excellent health. Read More

When NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey launches in April to explore the fourth planet from the Sun, it will carry a suite of scientific instruments designed to tell us what makes up the Martian surface, and provide vital information about potential radiation hazards for future human explorers. Read More

When NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey launches in April to explore the fourth planet from the Sun, it will carry a suite of scientific instruments designed to tell us what makes up the Martian surface, and provide vital information about potential radiation hazards for future human explorers. Read More

The first major step toward NASA's return of a spacecraft to an orbit around Mars was achieved late Thursday night, Jan. 4, when the Mars Odyssey spacecraft arrived at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Read More

Related Information

Mars in a Minute: How Do You Get to Mars?

What does it take to get a spacecraft from Earth all the way to Mars? There are a few key things to consider, as explained in this 60-second video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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Martian Pit Feature Found by Seventh Graders

Sixteen seventh-graders at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., found the Martian pit feature at the center of the superimposed red square in this image while participating in a program that enables students to use the camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU